Paradoxes and Possiblities
by boocooblue
Summary: AU Fic. Dave is the nerdy, quiet boy who is only noticed to be made fun of. Kurt is the head Cherrio who makes fun of him. When the two are paired up to boost Kurt's chemistry grade, maybe they will be able to reach an understanding. Rated M for language at first, but there will be smut later on.


Chapter One

If he was completely honest with himself, Dave would say that he was really looking forward to his junior year at William McKinley High School. Starting junior year meant several things: A- He was no longer an underclassman. B- He was officially over halfway done with high school. _Barely_ over halfway, but half is half and he was more than happy to take what he could get. C- He had gotten into AP Calculus II, which only had three other people in it, and one was a Chinese exchange student who didn't know more than ten words in English. And D- his locker was now, after some fraudulent activities, as far away from the locker room, the jocks, and Kurt Hummel as was possible.

The jocks didn't actually bother him much, not anymore. Dave was built kind of broadly- and he had a little bit of a pudge on him. But he was strong enough to keep the jocks thinking twice about shoving him around. His dad had a bench and weights in their attic, and Dave started lifting them in seventh grade after Finn Hudson and Noah Puckerman locked him in the janitor's closet. Which was actually kind of ironic, but Dave didn't expect their tiny, stegosaurus brains to get that.

Dave never actually had to hit anybody, but the jocks left him alone- except for the slushies. The problem with a slushy is you can't see your attacker, and then it was too late, and even if you _could _retaliate, you still had to clean the corn syrup out of your eyes. Dave had gotten slushied about once or twice a week since starting McKinley.

No. The one thing Dave really dreaded was Kurt Hummel and his insults. He wasn't really sure why, but the insults always seemed to be harder to take than the slushies. Dave actually preferred them. For the first two years, Dave was unfortunate enough to have a locker right next to Kurt's, so they saw each other about twice a day, sometimes more. And Kurt had never passed up an opportunity to bash Dave whenever he saw him.

"Hey Jumbotron, get out of our way."

"Did your mother seriously let you leave the house in that outfit?"

"Don't look over here; your face is giving us headaches."

And those were just about his appearance, which was obviously lacking. There were also a wide variety of gay jokes and insults. Then there had been the day when he went to his locker after lunch, and the word 'FAT' was scrawled out in big pink permanent marker letters, and then the T was crossed through, and a G was next to it. Kurt and his Cherrio friends were around the corner giggling like crazy. That had been the day Dave had signed into a library computer using a teacher's password that he'd gotten a hold of and managed to change his locker for the next year. _Yeah_, it was nowhere near any of his classes, but that was okay. He would rather get to school early and make the long walk around the campus than put up with Kurt.

The first month of school went great. He was only slushied once, he'd made an A+ on his first AP Calc test, and he was made the captain of the McKinley High Academic Team, the Titan-iums (the name had not been Dave's idea, but it was pretty funny). And he'd only passed Kurt Hummel once besides the one class they shared; art appreciation, which Dave was taking because it looked interesting, not because he could draw anything at all. It had been in the parking lot before school one morning. Dave was running a little late, and ended up parking in a different area than usual. Just as he'd climbed out of his truck, Kurt pulled up in his Mercedes. Dave didn't know much about different cars, but Kurt's was gorgeous. It was canary yellow with dark tinted windows, obviously all brand new, and insanely expensive.

Dave knew Kurt's dad was the head of the Lima City Council, and owned a chain of auto shops all through Ohio. His mom played piano, but he didn't know what else she did. Regardless, the Hummel family was loaded. And Kurt flaunted it quite a bit.

Like with the sports car. Which was still gorgeous, despite it's owners jack-ass-edness. When Kurt climbed out of the car, he caught Dave looking at it.

"You wish, Karofsky. The only way you'd ever afford something like this is if you sold all your extra weight for a hundred dollars a pound."

And he closed the door and walked off.

Dave wasn't blind. The thing about not talking very much is that you become a good observer. So he'd started watching Kurt Hummel because 'know thine enemy' and all that shit.

Big. _Fucking_. Mistake.

Dave had always been a quiet kind of kid, so when he got into middle school, he luckily wasn't expected to join in the other boy's conversations about which of the girls had come back after Easter break looking 'different'. He never thought it was weird that he never noticed the girls. But then, in sixth grade, a boy transferred into his class from another school. His name was Scott, and he was _breathtaking_. He had sandy hair that just curled and curled, and the most beautiful green eyes. Dave _finally_ got what the other boys where talking about when they started liking girls. But, he'd never heard them talking about another boy like that before.

So Dave did what he thought at the time was a wise move. He talked to the smartest, coolest person he knew.

His dad.

When Dave thought back on that talk years later, _hell_, even months later, he always felt mortified and beyond embarrassed. He explained the situation. The boys in his class always liked girls, but he met a boy he liked. Was that normal? What should he do about it?

Dave didn't understand it at the time, but looking back, his dad's reaction of paling, turning beet red, and then excusing himself to get a glass of scotch was _more_ than reasonable. When his dad came back about half an hour later, Dave got his answers. Paul Karofsky explained that not all boys liked girls and vice versa. Some boys like boys and girls like girls. And some liked both. And some liked neither. It wasn't necessarily a _bad_ thing, but it was a different thing. And the thing about being different was that people would always bother you about it. Paul had gotten down on his knees so he was at Dave's level, and told him that no matter what he decided he liked, he was always going to be there for him. But that not everyone would be so understanding. He told Dave that him liking boys might need to be a secret for a while.

That was the best advice Dave had ever had. He realized later that if he hadn't taken his dad's advice, he would have been shoved around and beaten up a lot more. In eighth grade, someone (he couldn't remember who) had called him a fag. Dave knew what it meant by then, and he didn't say anything against it. He was what he was. So from then on, everyone seemed to know he was gay, even though no one had never asked him if was true or not. They just knew.

So that was Dave's big coming out story.

By junior year, Dave had noticed a few guys around school, but it was just looking very covertly. He didn't really know any of them well. There was that Sam guy on the football team and in glee who had a fantastic body. There was James, the guy he sat next to in homeroom, who had a perfect smile. There was Cory, his AP physics lab partner from sophomore year who had regrettably graduated and taken the world's most incredible ass with him.

And then there was Kurt Hummel.

Kurt was in a league all of his own. Dave had always kept an eye on him, being observant, but he had changed over the summer between sophomore and junior years. Any lasting baby fat from around his face was gone, leaving his bones structured and more refined. He had gotten taller, making him only a couple of inches shorter than Dave. His hips had thinned out some, making his legs look longer. His eyes remained unchanged, though; still that perfect mix between blue and green and grey. He'd also picked up a different way of walking, almost like a sashay, that made him look like a runway model. And Dave couldn't pass up the opportunity to stare at Kurt as he walked away from him in the hallways, that damn Cherrios uniform fitting like a fucking _glove_.

It was really lucky that Dave disliked him so much or else he'd be following Kurt around McKinley, drooling wherever they went.

Dave felt that he had really been dealt a crappy card here. The one person in the school that he actually felt real _disgust_ for had also had to be the one person who didn't fail to turn him on. And there was absolutely no grey area of interpretation to guess what Kurt thought about him.

It was around the middle of September that Dave had the first dream with Kurt in it. Well, he'd had dreams about him before, but they weren't nice. These were _very_ nice dreams. After he woke up, covered in sweat and…other stuff, Dave wasn't able to remember much about the dream, apart from that it had been Kurt and him, and they were in the library in town. For some reason it was all empty, except the books. And all the books were the same; thousands and thousands of copies of 'The Hobbit'. That was all he clearly remembered, but he knew something else must have happened, because he liked 'The Hobbit', but not _that_ much.

Dave spent the period of art appreciation the next day avoiding looking anywhere except where Kurt was sitting. He had a feeling that if he looked at Kurt for too long, his face would either combust or Kurt would reveal some sort of mind reading ability and castrate him on the spot. Because Kurt was straight, and he had a history of taking out anyone who implied otherwise. Jacob Ben Israel still fled down the halls in a panic anytime he and Kurt crossed paths.

About a week or so after that, Dave got handed a message in the school's office that Mrs. Jordan, one of the science teachers, wanted to meet him after school to talk about tutoring someone. It wasn't the first time; Dave had tutored a few classmates, but he didn't really enjoy it. For someone who really hated talking to other people, it was almost like slow torture. Like Chinese Water Torture. Still, it was worth extra credit, and the promise of glowing and winsome letters of recommendation on college applications. And Dave figured it was good for him. It would suck to get rusty on the basics of chemistry.

So, at three o'clock, Dave made his way down to the science wing of McKinley and headed down to Mrs. Jordan's room. He really liked Mrs. Jordan. She was the first teacher he met when he was a freshman, and she was so nice. A little scatterbrained, and she'd been known to 'accidently' cause minor explosions and fires in lab, but she was nice. Dave suspected she made things explode and such to terrify the shit out of freshmen and troublemakers who thought they could slack off in her class. He really respected her.

That was, he did respect her, until he walked in the door of her classroom, still smelling a little like sulfur and eggs, and he saw who Mrs. Jordan had in mind for tutoring.

Just his luck. Kurt _fucking_ Hummel.


End file.
